This Tea Party Activist Was Targeted by the IRS. Now He’s Fighting Back.

Ken McIntyre /
February 22, 2014

Among the scandals dogging the Obama administration is one involving the Internal Revenue Service. Both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice are examining evidence that the IRS illegally targeted dozens of conservative groups for political reasons — asking invasive questions about their applications for tax-exempt status and holding up those applications without explanation, in some cases for years.

Nashville lawyer Kevin Kookogey, who is also a Heritage Foundation member and donor, founded an educational organization called Linchpins of Liberty in 2010. Its mission was to ground high school and college students in the continuing relevance of America’s founding principles. Kookogey says improper IRS actions effectively ruined his group, a story he told in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in June 2013.

In an exclusive interview with The Foundry’s Genevieve Wood, Kookogey details his continuing ordeal with the IRS. Watch until the end to find out why he says President Obama was correct when he told Bill O’Reilly that there wasn’t a “smidgen” of corruption at the IRS.